Search

I have been going through my database trying to pick out all the people who I don’t have a 1911 census entry for. I know I should really run a query to do it but that is beside the point, it is good to manually go through the branches of my tree once in a while.

I now have a folder of images that I need to go through and capture all the details and add to the database, then I can run a query and see who I am missing.

One interesting puzzle turned up when I searched for my great-aunt Nellie Caroline MITCHELL. She was born in West Dean, Sussex in 1899. I had previously found most of the family, including my grandfather and great-grandparents in West Dean, but Nellie wasn’t there, and I didn’t think much of it at the time.

Now I have gone back and searched for her I have discovered the eleven year old Nellie as a patient in a home for sick and crippled children at 181 Priory Road, Hastings, Sussex, known as the House of Sacred Compassion.

I know very little about Nellie, I have a marriage for her back at West Dean in 1933 to a Frank CUTLER, so whatever was wrong with Nellie wasn’t fatal, but I have no idea what it was. It appears that she died in the Chichester Registration District in 1977, so she had quite a long life, but there doesn’t appear to have been any children from the marriage.

I can find virtually nothing about the House of Sacred Compassion online, so don’t really know what it was, but I assume it was a religious charity set-up to look after sick children. I suspect a visit to the library in Hastings or the East Sussex Record Office is going to be needed to find out more.

In the meantime I am going to have to question my mother and her brothers and sisters to see if they have any recollections of their aunt Nellie Caroline MITCHELL.